Getting our house in order
Last week, Environment minister Noel Dempsey published the Dublin government's new Planning and Development Bill. This new bill is set to supecede 13 separate pieces of existing legislation in an attempt to rationalise planning procedures in the 26 Counties.
The planning bill was heralded as a cure all for many ills in the Irish building sector. Tackling the housing crisis is the central aim of the new legislation.
The bill proposes to facilitate the provision of ``adequate housing'' as well as ``social and affordable housing'' and the ``development of more socially integrated communities''.
All local authorities are required to draw up a housing strategy, which will form part of a development plan for the housing needs in that area. This plan needs to take account of the need for providing adequate social housing as well as providing affordable housing and housing that meets the needs of families, one-person households, the elderly and the disabled.
One of the proposals in the bill is that developers seeking planning permission for lands they own must be prepared to sell up to 20 per cent of the land on the site for affordable or social housing.
This has prompted some media commentators and vested interests in the building industry to get into the denouncement business. The 20 per cent sell-off proposals were an example of Stalinism, socialism or Nazism according to whichever right-wing doom merchant you happened to be reading or listening to.
The Planning Bill is none of these things. It is just a small example of the reality that market-driven policies to provide housing in the 26 Counties have failed.
There is much in the new bill that needs to be examined carefully. There are many sections that will speed up the planning process and there are serious doubts that this is a good thing.
It is interesting to note that the one positive element in the proposals has got the most flack while the other sections of the bill have not received an adequate public airing. We need informed debate on the new Planning and Development Bill, not just the shrill whines of vested interests.
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